ABSTRACT
From the departure of the first convict fleet settler Australia was a well documented society. Corruption however is a major exception. Political corruption will always try to leave behind as meagre a paper trail as possible, and except to participants the verbal record will present similar difficulties. The Australian experience of political corruption is of course unique, but it is also an accessible microcosm of wider experience. The word corruption has always had a place in both the popular and intellectual vocabulary of politics and a more general use. Corruption is one of that class of words – fascist, racist, communist, and now sexy, are other examples – which effectively have no meaning because they mean exactly what the speaker wants them to mean. The most obvious and cogent indicator of the failure of political corruption to make the grade of academic respectability is the paucity of literature except in a few specialist areas arguably of secondary significance.
